Nara is easily defined by the super huge and famous deer park, where you are free to roam with deers, take photos of them and feed them. There’s a lot of trust between the visitors and the deers who are almost domesticated due to the frequency of interaction with humans.
A day trip would more than suffice in my opinion. We went from Osaka which took us less than an hour by train from our station at Nippombashi to Kintetsu Nara Station – not long at all and leaves us with plenty of time to explore!
Getting around Nara
Depending on your preferences, you could go by foot or by bicycle. We chose the latter because rental is really affordable at 500 yen ($7) for a whole day!
Here’s the rental details:
Nara Rent-a-Cycle
Address: 22-1 Takamaichi-cho, Nara City 630-8238 East Entrance
Their map:
Their operating hours are only until 5pm but they have a little drop off area for you to drop your keys through.
As you’re walking, you should see the signs that says Rent a Cycle
And this is how the shop looks like!
After grabbing bikes, we were off!
Things to do/see at Nara
Nara Park
The main destination we covered was, of course, the deer park. If you’re looking to stay longer in Nara, there are tons of other stuff you can check out too!
It won’t be hard getting to the deer park on foot or on bike. It’s a lot faster to cycle there so take that into consideration as well! There are lots of signs that will point you towards the correct direction. Start from the train station again if unsure.
The park is pretty huge, go straight to the center of the park and you’ll find a bigger concentration of deers. How would you know when you’ve arrived? Deers of course.
In this case we entered a random spot and found a few already haha
This is the full view of the spot, you can find a few deers lying around
Feels like a cheesy photoshoot, and on a side note I’m such a deer whisperer look at its peaceful face as I touch its antler
Deer whisperer confirmed.
Alternatively if you’re not a deer whisperer, attract the deers with food you can purchase at little stalls by the side of the park.
Inside the park itself, there are tons of temples and shrines as well.
The famous Todai-ji temple that we chose to take from outside hahaha
Gates
A boat we saw on the lake
Cycling further in rewarded us with more beautiful sights and away from most people. There was this group of teenagers jogging and we saw them pass us once or twice, much respect cuz the park is huge?!
Saw a couple of deers by the river
We came across this beautiful meadow with very few tourists and where the deers are more wild and less willing to interact with humans
“Don’t turn your back on me Scar”
Konishi Sakura Dori
It shouldn’t be hard to spot the street, it’s right outside the train station and has plenty of nice cafes and restaurants, worth visiting especially after walking around the park. The street name is the address itself, so keying in Konishi Sakura Dori would immediately point you to the correct place.
It’s a nice street to walk and chill for a bit
A cafe we entered to chill for a bit
Things to eat
Maguro Koya
This is a fairly famous restaurant that serves delicious tuna dishes.
Address: Japan, 〒630-8266 Nara Prefecture, Nara 花芝町６
If tuna is your thing, or even if it’s not, I would highly recommend this restaurant! Fair warning, you won’t expect top-class hygiene in this place, when I observe the friendly owner of the place go around doing his thing, I had my doubts about the food because the place looked fairly rundown. The food however, way exceeded my expectation. I was never a tuna person and Maguro Koya made me fall in love with tuna sashimi. Says a lot.
A tiny restaurant along the streets of Nara
We ordered one Sashimi Teisyoku and one Tataki a la carte
The owner’s English was pretty good! Here he’s searing my tuna.
ugh THIS WAS SO DELICIOUS AND FRESH!!! Just look at that color.
Tataki – seared tuna, uncooked inside
This was a very satisfying meal and easily one of my favorite in all of Japan. Highly recommend to visit.
And that wraps up Nara day trip! It was surprisingly quite relaxed although we covered a bit of ground. I think the cycling part helped, we got through the park and to cafes/restaurants really quickly.
darmawanders 